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Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Several Exciting Things

[NB: I have been accused (more than once) of ‘overusing’
CAPITAL LETTERS for DRAMATIC EFFECT, so I have decided to limit myself and have
only used Capital Letter for the beginning of words which are Important. I hope
you appreciate and enjoy this change in my writing style.]

Several Very Exciting Things have happened over the past few
days. First of all, I had my First Interaction with an Austrian Builder 2k12. I
found him lurking in the basement which until that point I did not know
existed. He had a strong local accent so I didn’t understand a word he said,
and had to resort to smiling politely and slowly backing away.

THEN I went on a pre-arranged outing that my mentor teacher
signed me up for. This wasaorganised by the English department of the Grammar
School next door and involved a trip to a traditional pub that was celebrating
‘Knudltag’, or, for monolinguals: “Dumpling Day”. “Knudl” sounds a lot like
“canoodle” so I have been saying it as much as possible! We drove up into the
mountains and when we arrived the waiter shook all of our hands and the owner
of the pub came out to greet us extremely cheerfully! “Gruβ
Gott!” he hollered, and we all hollered back! We sat in the baking sun, looking
over views of the mountains. I was served three courses of dumpling based
dishes, starting with Liver Dumpling Soup, which I dutifully finished, despite
a flavour and texture I would not recommend you try unless forced to by
politeness. Then we had a main course of savory dumplings and ‘sauerkraut’,
which is basically a very disappointing version of coleslaw. The weirdest thing
about Dumpling Day is that all the Dumplings are the same and only the filling
changes. So we had plum and Nutella dumplings that were made of the same
dumpling as the meat and lard dumplings (!!!!) but I ate them all anyway. I was
treated to the meal by one of the English teachers and I certainly enjoyed the
nice traditional experience, even though I don’t know if I’d eat so many
dumplings again ever again. Nobody had a satisfying explanation of why Dumpling
Day existed; in fact they found it strange I even questioned it.

The most exciting thing about Dumpling Day was that
[SIGNIFICANT DRAMATIC PAUSE] I made a New American Friend! My New American Friend works as a teaching
assistant at the Grammar school and has been here a year. After Dumpling Day
she showed me some of the sights of Amstetten, which were a statue of a wolf
and…well, that was it, actually, but we also had some coffee at a little coffee
shop and treated ourselves to some ice cream.

When I was wondering home, I fantasised about how pleasant
it would be to pee as soon as I got in, as all the dumplings were pressing on
my bladder and I needed the ‘WC’. However, I was soon beckoned from my path by
a dark, mysterious figure, rather like the wolf in little Red Riding Hood. As I
approached I soon realised it was my Dear Old Landlady, who was waiting to go
into the Grammar school, where she used to work, to attend some kind of event.
She couldn’t really explain what exactly the event was, but she encouraged me
to come in with her, so I did, keeping a beady eye for the toilets. It soon
became apparent it was an evening held for the ‘friends of the school’ and it’s
beneficiaries, and not everybody was entirely delighted to see me tagging
along. Everyone was dressed very smartly and I was still in my Dumpling Day
outfit. We went upstairs and they promptly began giving long speeches in fast
and complicated German. This, and the fact that there was no toilet break,
meant I was eagerly awaiting it all to be over. However, when it did end, they
presented us with alcohol and nibbles, and Dear Old Landlady introduced me to
all the important people. I spoke to the music teacher who’s in an orchestra,
and I asked if I could join too, and then he told me about trips they made to
the opera and to musicals in Vienna. Dear Old Landlady left then, but made me
stay because I think she (rightly) thought I needed to make some friends. I
spoke to one of the girls who had provided musical entertainment during the
talks, who had just graduated high school and is now studying medicine in
Vienna. She was completely fluent in English, and it turned out that because
her mum was an English teacher and they both loved period dramas. This gave us
a LOT to talk about – they’d even seen Cranford! They gave me loads of tips of
German books and poetry to read to help me improve, and then gave me a lift
home.

I took this photo with my camera!

On Saturday, New American Friend and I went to Vienna for
‘Night at the Museum’, where you buy a ticket to for 13 euros which lets you go
into about 122 museums that stay open until 1am. We met at the train station,
but by the team we’d gotten tickets and got ourselves sorted there was only one
minute until the train left which meant we had to RUN through the underpass and
down the platform. A woman with a scooter leapt to our assistants and held the
door open for us, and we jumped on as the train was starting to leave the
platform. It was So Cool. The excitement, thankfully, did not stop there. The
train was like a modern Harry Potter train. After being screamed at by a very
irate young lady in the corridor, we went into the only compartment with spare
seats where Mr Charistmatic was stting. Mr Charismatic told us that it was a
compartment for ‘retired people’ only, (by which I think he meant disabled
people), but if the ticket lady asked we could say we were with him as he had a
poorly foot (NB: the ticket lady did not ask). Mr Charismatic then left us
alone for a while, but once we started talking about the general election he
got interested, and spent the next 40 minutes animatedly telling us about
himself and how much he loved America. He was Russian, but originally Spanish,
but born in Austria (?) and runs a jewellery shop with his father and a
property business. I know all about him. He even showed us pictures of his
family, and told us about his visits to New York. Then he gave us valuable life
advice, especially on choosing a spouse, and some tips about Vienna. Eventually
we reached Westbahnhof and Mr Charismatic bid us farewell.

A blurred image showing me contemplating a marzipan gogo dancer. Regular followers may be interested to not how long my hair is! I'm wearing an unusual selection of little known high street brands (i.e. Primark and H&M) and orthopaedic shoes designed for the elderly. The woman is wearing marzipan.

Vienna is a tiny capital – it only has 5 different colours
on the underground map. We started in the centre, where there’s a cathedral,
and had Sturm and pancakes in a restaurant, followed by The Best Kebab of My
Life. We didn’t really have a plan for the museums, but started at the Natural
History Musem, were me met Other Teaching Assistants. The Natural History
Museum was MANIC, there were people everywhere. There were little stalls with
demonstrations and samples, where people got especially bustly. We then made a
very poor decision and queued for an inordinate amount of time for a very small
and rubbish marzipan experience, where they gave us free boiled sweets and NO
marzipan. We left dejected, disappointed and desiccated (like a coconut!) then
My New American Assistant Friend and I went to the art museum, which was
INSANELY GOOD! All the walls were ornately decorated, with painted ceilings and
alcoves and marble pillars. The very top had murals by Klimt, which we climbed
up 3 gazillion steps to see, but it was really worth it. Then we went to the
Ancient Egyptian area where there were loads of mummies, and hieroglyphics
painted all over the walls. It was really, really cool. In fact it was so cool
that we couldn’t drag ourselves away until we abruptly realised we had 20
minutes to get back to the train station in time for our train at 23:50, which
was three tube stops away. By this time we were hobbling and wheezing from
walking too much and lack of hydration, so we hobbled to the underground
station and waited for the next train. When it arrived we had 10 minute left
before the train left. When we got to the train station we had about four and a
half minutes left. Naturally, the underground
train was under the ground so we had
to haul out tired, aching bodies up three escalators to get to the normal train
station, where we fumbled about getting ourselves tickets from the horrid
little machines. We got the tickets at 11.49. Then we had to run up another
flight of stairs and to Platform 5 where the train was. We ran to the train
door, but realised that this train was actually some kind of cruel ruse that
Wasn’t Going Anywhere and was positioned there to confuse and upset people. The
train we needed was actually the next one down the platform. This was about a
100m sprint to the doors, which we managed in I’d say about 25 seconds, which considering
everything is pretty good, especially as we’d already run about 55 miles. When
we got on the train we were panting heavily, I was sweating and I thought I
might faint, so I went to sleep.